A Conspiracy of Deadbeats

A Conspiracy of Deadbeats: a brief rhetorical experiment in addressing the anti-tax movement

Imagine if somebody came to your tea party and dined from the goodies spread out before her while enjoying the teatime entertainment and then, when the bill was passed around, balked at the suggestion that she pay her fair share.  Why do we endure this on a national level?  That's what the modern anti-tax crusader is doing.  The anti-tax movement is not made of mere fiscal conservatives who want to moderate expenses.    The 2009 anti-tax crusader is a deadbeat --  the mooching brother-in-law of America who won’t move out of the family den while refusing to pay anything into the family coffers.  It's an ongoing and neverending con.  Well, I think it's time to call these fair-weather patriots what they are -- economic traitors to their country.  Even when our country is on the edge of economic catastrophe, they still don't want to serve their nation with their dollars and cents. 

How else to pay for the infrastructure?  How else to educate our children, build roads and bridges for them to safely cross, and  how else to sustain the larger society we all enjoy?   If these anti-tax deadbeats want to move to some distant land without roads and bridges, and build a palace for their own family, then let them do so.  But we are all Americans.  All responsible citizens have brought something to our common tea party.  But these anti-tax misers, much as Ebenerzer Scrooge, even refuse to help our weaker and more fragile citizens.

And we all know what happened to Scrooge.

This little rant has been a friendly foreshadowing of my next OpEd on Repurposing the Right’s Propaganda.  

It’s time to give the right-wing a taste of their own medicine (and assorted other similes and metaphor).